Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday October 12, 2012 @02:40PM
from the another-warning-message-your-parents-can-ignore dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Mozilla announced it will prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight to update their plugins, but refused to detail how the system will work. Now, the organization has unveiled 'click-to-play plugin blocks,' which will be on by default in Firefox 17, starting with the three aforementioned plugins. (Expect more to be added eventually.) Furthermore, you can try out the feature for yourself now in Firefox 17 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux."
Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."

It hasn't been good, fast, or secure in years. The last good thing Firefox did was inspire a collection of captioned images of red foxes. Before that, the last good thing it did was show that an open source browser could be a match for IE6 and adhere to the HTML standards better.

The big reason that Firefox managed to hold on for so long was the ad blocker plugin.

Chrome still doesn't have that. And it doesn't have a working mouse gestures add on, either. The half-decent one was pulled because it was sending all your visited pages back to its server, and the currents ones aren't very configurable and you either have the context menu pop up when you right click, or you have to double right click on links to open them. What a piece of crap. I don't care how fast it is - it's not as safe or as comfortable an experience as FF. Oh, and i'm not sure if you've checked

Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

And yet, FF 16 is noticeably snappier for me than 15 was. Glad they got 16.0.1 out quickly. The developer tool updates in the last few versions are very welcome, as well, and certainly the reduced memory use is very nice.

This is simply inaccurate. Firefox 10 (via changes that arrived way back at Firefox 7) was dramatically better than Firefox 4-6 and Firefox 15 was a good bit better than Firefox 10, thanks to killing add-on leaks and some other minor but incremental improvements in Firefox 11, 12, 13, and 14.

Or to put it another way, Firefox 7 and Firefox 15 both made major advances in memory usage. More memory and performance optimizations hit in 16 or will in upcoming releases with Incremental Garbage Collection, IonMonkey, and then a Compacting Generational GC.

I realize that unsupported assertions based on anecdotes is the norm around here, but expect to get called when they're the opposite of the truth. For the details, read the last few months worth of posts here: https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ [mozilla.org]

I've been keeping a very close eye on Firefox memory usage for quite a long time, and every release uses more memory than the previous version. I've done everything from disabling plugins and extensions, running in safe mode, and even uninstalling the browser, wiping out my profile, and re-installing with no plugins or extensions, and the results are the same. If I surf a Javascript heavy site like DeviantArt for 20 minutes, memory usage goes up to 600-800MB (Fir

You're not a troll, you're obviously just visiting the wrong sites with firefox;) Actually, it's the javascript and flash at fault for the RAM usage. Turn that crap off completely whenever you're not using it and you'll be able to keep firefox open for months, or until the 2nd Tuesday denial of service. Some sites just have very buggy code.

You've also obviously never run opera with 50 tabs. With that many, you have to turn off javascript and plugins or it will crash constantly and suck up RAM like ther

Yeah, flashblock just blocks flash, but some people prefer that to the more comprehensive noscript.Nowdays in Firefox you can go to about:config and set plugins.click_to_play to true to accomplish the same thing, although Flashblock, last I checked, still has a better UI

Actually this is a good thing. The new api that the plugins use do not break during each release.

I just started warming up to Firefox recently. After I submitted the story last spring of FF using the least amount of memory I gave it another whirl. It is much faster, it no longer nags you, flash is now sandboxed, and it gets faster during each release.

With 5.0 I agree. I actually went back to IE 9 which was a decent browser back in 2011 believe it or not contrary to popular belief on slashdot. I found Chrome too lacking with features and minimalistic.

But FF is much improved and they already patched the 16 bug. 16.01 is out starting last last night.

How is this not making the browser more secure? Firefox is already pretty damn fast. Last 3-4 releases have consistently reduced browser and extension memory usage as well (it was never a concern for me personally, all systems I use have over 10 GB of RAM anyway). And this change only mitigates the third party risk in a least intrusive way possible.
I say go Mozilla. Firefox is still very competitive and in my opinion the best browser out there. This is why I still use it. In fact I can't imagine using any

I think you totally missed the fact that they were in such a hurry to release this new feature that they missed a major security bug. Their focus was on adding new features and not verifying that any code that was changed is still working correctly and securely. They should be embarrassed that the user community had to point out this glaring issue. Also FF16 apparently broken a number of add-ins as well. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-16-Bug-Causes-Some-Add-ons-to-Malfunction-298217.shtml [softpedia.com]

One of my friend (real ones) likes to call anyone she 'meets' online through social networking as 'imaginary friends' And me personally I RARELY every use facebook. I log in maybe once every few months to clean out crap that collects and move on.. And the only time I use twitter is to promote the next Humble Bundle that unleashed new linux and mac ports in.

You mean, meeting in meat space? Heaven forbid. These mortal coils of ours are getting more and more outdated. It requires such effort to synchronize two intellects to meet at a certain point and time, and then to move two 200lb bodies from wherever they happen to be to that point in time and place in space.

The inconvenience of course is in experiencing any sort of fleshy exertion as well as having to deal with the vicissitudes of the physical world. Going up a flight of stairs, getting delayed in traffic, etc. All serve to frustrate the would-be mortal coil transcender.

It will help when we have cybernetic implants such that we can control our environment more readily with our thoughts. I'm thinking bionic arms and legs, and perhaps jetpacks, which are mentally-commanded, much like our regular arms and legs are, except they won't tire or feel pain.

However, that's still not ideal as the machinery can break and still has to deal with physical forces. That'll just be a temporary stopgap until we can integrate everything meaningful into a consensual hallucination existing only on the computers of the world. Plug in, upload your consciousness, and then move about in and interact with a world entirely of your own making. No more need to move heavy bodies in the physical world, thus all of those muscles required for motion can atrophy, reducing the required caloric intake. The body becomes a more capable yet more powerful machine thanks to the mental interface into cyberspace.

This won't be ideal at first until all the kinks are worked out. You're not gonna want a server outage to fry the brains of everyone currently uploaded to that server. It's that blasted physical world, again. But eventually the electronics will get smaller, we'll need less and less of our bodies, and we'll have a brilliantly glorious future consisting of billions of disembodied human brains side-by-side in gigantic clusters all uploaded to the most powerful networked computer program ever made, dependent upon almost-invisible/ethereal hardware. Boring from the outside, but inside, we won't have to eat, drink or sleep to survive. Just one long massive near-eternal dream whose inhabitants can do what they want, when they want: mass orgies, gigantic visceral FPSs, mini-golf simulations, RPGs, petting kitties, you name it.

What a glorious future awaits this human race. Until then, I will continue living in this painful physical world... my first action will be to finish consuming this bag of fried pork skins.

Bah! An evolutionary left-over. A pitiful remnant which only goes to show the limitations of blind nature. I'll take my genetically-enhanced pleasure receptors massively stimulated by the electrodes plugged into my brain-in-a-vat set in tandem with the visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations of dozens of impossibly (and I mean physically impossibly) attractive females, each specifically designed by the PleasureSystem to cater to my specific tastes thanks to it having completely emulated my brain neuron

> Am I the only one who thinks that we need LESS social networking as opposed to oh say, actually meeting> and talking to people in person?

No, because it would be expensive, environmentally damaging and logisitically impossible to perform all the conversations I have with friends, family and colleagues around the world in person rather than from my phone on the bus to work, train home from work or during adverts on tv shows.

I mean, I could talk to people online less, so that my real-life meetings try

Thank you for cherrypicking what you don't like and using it to pretend that Mozilla isn't making their browser faster, leaner, and more secure with every release. And for saying what you did as though they're the only browser vendor that's adding extraneous "stuff" to their browser.

THIS, this right here. People scream that I must be hating on FOSS when I point out Mozilla has gone off the rails (even though the browser i recommend for security features, Comodo Dragon, is based on Chromium) but the simple fact is they had a mission statement, which they used to get us all off the Mozilla Suite, which ever since Chrome started getting users they seem to have thrown right out the window. Remember what that statement was? "To make the best small fast and light browser that is standards co

People don't listen to you because YOU'RE off the rails. You seem to be pretending that Firefox is so bloated, ill-equipped, and under-performant that people should just ditch it. And then you tell them to choose a browser that you prefer, like some insane marketing droid for Chromium, which isn't a rationally better choice in any general way.

You can pretend that your favorite features are the most important, but they aren't. Chromium has its own security problems, performance bottlenecks, and basic compati

Hi Mrs AC, can't waste the 3 seconds to make an account? And where did you see me plug ANYTHING? In fact I gave a HUGE list of choices, all of which run better than Firefox since V7, Chrome, Chromium, QTWeb, SWIron, Dragon, Safari, opera.

But if you want to pretend needing a fricking multicore for a browser is "competitive" why you go right on ahead and think that Mrs AC, meanwhile look at the numbers and you'll see month after month after month FF usage is going DOWN and not up or even holding.

Well if you throw enough resources at a problem? I'm sure you'll find something it'll run great on. problem is the market seems to be moving AWAY from the big power hogging ultima systems and towards low power computing which FF? Really REALLY blows at.

Again I REALLY wish it wasn't so, I was a FF fan going back to the Moz suite, and I still try each new release and the forks. Its just....its just NOT good. Each release sucks more resources, has more senior moments, its just not good.

That's like saying "Well it runs great on Linux"...uhhh...and? its a totally different beast and since the majority is NOT using FF on a smartphone that isn't what we should be looking at but the Windows desktop where most of their users lie, and in that arena they suck, I'm sorry but they do. take any tool that will give you a CPU and RAM meter in the tray, I use AnVir Task Manager but there are plenty of others, put the same bookmarks into both FF and any Chromium based and do your own shootout. In my ow

Yes it does. SeaMonkey uses 13% less memory on my system with the same three tabs, slashdot, slate, and LQ open as does FireFox. Which is funny considering FF was started to be lighter weight than SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey is far and away the better browser now in terms of UI as well.

I use modern computers. At work my computer has 32 GB of memory. At home I have 16 GB of memory. My laptop has 8 GB. I honestly could not care less how much memory Firefox uses because it can't use enough for any of these computers to care (Firefox being a 32-bit program) and I would rather the program use RAM (which is fast) instead of disk (which is slow).

I have better things to do using the web browser itself instead of incessantly complaining about the fact that the program that encompasses 80% of my home use as 30% of my work use uses an equally large amount of the resources of the computer. I want the personal computer to spend it's time running the programs I'm using. I don't want 90% of the fast resources to be always available and doing nothing whatsoever. If this were still 2006 or if we were talking about servers, the memory usage shtick would be a valid complaint. However, now that memory capacity is an order of magnitude greater than it was (thanks to 64-bit operating systems and lower cost per GB) and considering that web browsing is never something you should be doing on a server, it's really not a valid complaint anymore.

You're either doing something stupid (like running badly coded extensions), using ancient hardware (which can't keep up anyway), or just enjoying playing the same old song and dance over and over. The Firefox memory complaints were valid when there were actual memory leaks that might consume 90% of available system memory. That is no longer reality, and unless you're running beta and third party 64-bit builds, it's a technical impossibility.

YES!!!! I finally feel like a real bad ass running systems with *only* 1 or 2g of RAM!

Seriously, Firefox is fine on small machines too. That means that it's not an issue on an average machine or big machines (which will be average soon enough). Also, most articles comparing browsers show that Firefox is competitive with other browsers WRT memory usage. You kids just need to find something else to bitch about that's all.

You memory trolls are starting to sound as stupid as the version number trolls.

The amount of memory Firefox uses has always been a catch-all statement for bad behavior and poor performance, not a strict indication of the problem of running out of RAM (usually).

Personally, for a very long time, if Firefox crossed 1 GB of RAM usage, I could pretty much guarantee issues with slow tab switching, glitchy scrolling, the browser as a whole briefly hanging every few minutes, sometimes even bogging down my entire OS if it decided to saturate the CPU.

I use modern computers. At work my computer has 32 GB of memory. At home I have 16 GB of memory. My laptop has 8 GB. I honestly could not care less how much memory Firefox uses because it can't use enough for any of these computers to care

baconbits.... um... my main computer is a 2006 24in imac with a 2ghz dual-core xeon and 2gb of RAM. oh, and debian gnu/linux booting grub2-efi of course. it's *really* struggling with the number of tabs that i keep open (over 50).

but here's the thing: i actually consider myself lucky to have 2gb of RAM. i don't fucking well have enough money to go buying new computers right now and i resent what you're implying by saying "yeah who cares, just get more RAM, what's the big deal??"

Some of us are still using 32-bit netbooks or laptops, which have 1GB to 2GB of memory. Some of us don't have these so-called "modern" computers because we find our slightly older ones are sufficient for our purposes, and are not interested in casually spending money on things we don't really need.

Not to mention some of us know what the median U.S. household income is, and know what that actually means (that fancy ultrabook that costs $2000 in New York City still costs $2000 in Atlanta).

I like when people trot out the old "I've got a computer from two years ago that has no problems running this program, and cost next to nothing for me when I got it, so you should have one too" argument when it comes to resource hogs. It really shows how detached from reality they actually are.

Maybe you are not doing other work on the same computer you are running Firefox on. Other people do.

Also, the "memory is cheap" attitude unfortunately means that there are hundreds of processes running on the computer which each by itself eats a "negligible" amount of memory (usually less than 1 %), but together they eat a considerable amount of memory.

Oh, and not everyone buys a new computer every two years (and the computer I've got at work is indeed from 2007, so not too far from 2006).

I use nightly, version: >=19.0a1 (yyyy-mm-DD) 64bit. The advantage of using nightly are -1day exploits unique to my system on that day and speed, lot's of it. The worst infrequent problem I got from running nightly were solved by restarting it, letting it update itself and restoring my recently closed tabs from the history submenu.

If not your boss is a total moron. Let's state that a worker cost 10$/hour and that he work 40h/week and use a computer with 256mo to make something worth 1000$ each week to the company. Assuming a linear relation, using 2Go would at least produce 2000$ worth of work. Now, those workstation need super special RAM, priced at 2000$ for 2Go. It would take a month for the RAM to pay for itself. After that it would be profit

The 'social API' stuff sounds like utter nonsense; but plugin blocking is both a logical evolution of a previous feature(the https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ [mozilla.org] link in the part of the interface for viewing plugins) and a very good idea for security.

Between Flash and Java, though not exclusive to them, browsing the internet with outdated plugins is about as safe as picking up used needles from a shooting gallery floor and injecting yourself in the hopes of scoring free heroin...

Are people actually writing to Mozilla and asking them to disable old versions of plugins?

No, they're writing in complaining that Firefox is not secure enough even though the root cause is absolutely horrible plugins from the likes of Adobe and Microsoft. Users have taken up the position that it's the Firefox's fault when Adobe or Microsoft happen. It doesn't seem that unreasonable for Mozilla to point out to the user that they're using bad software which may be causing the thing that the user is bitchi

Hopefully there is something built in separating that social API sidebar from what you are actually browsing. Facebook/Google/Apple/Skeezy Advertisers wouldn't need tracking cookies to know exactly where you surfed.

Will Mozilla provide isolation for its social apps from the rest of the tabs, when requested by the user; i.e providing cintrols on what browsing data, session, cookies and history the social API will be able to access, or will this make it more difficult for users to wall social apps than it is to do so with web-based social apps using plug-ins as many now do?

If you don't use any social providers, you'll never enable the social integration features in Firefox. Mozilla has hundreds of engineers working to make Firefox better. Not everyone is going to find value in what every one of them are working on. Social API is a small team, just a handful of developers, working on something that *will* be useful to hundreds of millions of Facebook and other social service users.

I'd like to see some more progress in MIdori. It's already pretty functional (in Linux), though it has a bug or two and could use a few extra features. I switch back and forth from Midori and FF for now, at least until FF gets too weird, which seems inevitable.

WTF can't there be an all-around good browser that doesn't turn to crap?

Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."

Can someone explain to me why crap like this is being incorporated into Firefox as a core feature, but if we want a traditional status bar or address bar, that has to be a plugin?

First you install Firefox...
Then Flashblock....
Then Adblock Plus
Then Noscript
Then Fasterfox...
Then....

Make a browser that has the ability to turn off crap like ads, flash, easily white or black list javascript enabled sites (google, gmail, etc.) and reduce bloat (170mb of ram just to browse slashdot in firefox?!?!?!) and I'll be happy. Social Media integration? wow, who gives a flying firefox.....

Not sure why Mozilla is forcing this on their users. I have ran FF for a long time, and one of the additions I really like is the Google Toolbar. It has not been maintained for a while, and it takes a tweak to convince FF12 and up to load it, but it does what I want. Losing this ability will be time to move on to another browser. Chrome, Opera, or heavens forbid, Internet Exploder...

Release after release, Mozilla has taunted us with the ability to remove unwanted plugins, but that promise has never been realized. Why?For Firefox to be secure, it should never allow a plug to be added and activated without the users's permission.

What about Chromium? Its Chrome without the Google stuff to extract data to track people for showing ads.
http://www.chromium.org/Home [chromium.org]
I really liked Firefox and recommended to everyone, but with this loss of focus in an attempt to reprove its relevance with it so called "rapid release", its having the reverse effect and may give MS a new opportunity to push its semi-w3c complaint browser. Apple Safari may be a good alternative for MS windows clients but I haven't looked into whether it collects data. I n

Or, at the very least, those developers could be retrained and fruitfully employed. Testing cluebats on the Mozilla community co-ordinators & technical evangelists - who would rather gaslight people with different opinions than listen to them - might occupy a few...

I've stuck with V3.6.x. I don't like the UI of the 4.x and newer versions and I don't like the route mozilla is going. If there was another browser that supported all the developer plugins FF has I would be dumping FF. Time to get the source for FF3.6 and modify it to tell sites it's the newer version even if it isn't. Mozilla's "rapid" outdating is just a little much. Newer isn't always better.... I don't want to go back to IE!

good luck with that. The internet becomes jscript heavier with each passing day and performance of ff3.6 is abysmal. What about evolving standards like slowly finalized CSS3, SVG and what not? Your idea is yet another IE6 story, the bane of webdevs, which is ironic, considering you've mentioned dev plugins.

The Firefox team is off the rails. In fact, the whole Mozilla Foundation has lost its way. First they basically abandon Thunderbird for no reason, and now they're bolting on entire social media interfaces. Commercial, closed-source ones at that. All because their egos make them want to stay with the big boys, instead of innovating, instead of just trying to be the best browser.

If there was a fast, secure, standards-compliant browser that was compatible with the Firefox plugin architecture, I'd jump in a second.

Watch it, Protoplasm is probably patented by those big corps that have strangled FF into a media sack. LOL
Not funny is that FF/MF is cowtowing to the big corps so that we loose control of our web experience. I prefer not to use the recent flash and pdf reader because of all the strings attached and adds popping up in the middle of videos or the services running constantly contacting home base to report in (acrobat). I'm not against ads but the media they use is distracting past annoying, many are stupid li